The musée Fesch is the central museum of fine arts in Ajaccio on Corsica. Located within the gated Palais Fesch, it is in the town's Borgu d'Ajaccio quarter. It was established by Napoleon I's uncle, cardinal Joseph Fesch , in Fesch's birthplace.
The Panthéon is a monument in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, France. It is located in the area known as the Latin Quarter, standing atop the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, at the center of the Place du Panthéon which was named after it. The edifice was built from 1758 to 1790 over the designs of Jacques-Germain Soufflot at the behest of King Louis XV of France, who meant it as a church dedicated to Saint Genevieve, the city's patron saint, whose relics were to be housed there. Neither Soufflot nor Louis XV however lived to see the church completed.
By the time the construction was finished, the French Revolution had started, and the National Constituent Assembly voted in 1791 to transform the Church of Saint Genevieve into a mausoleum for the remains of distinguished French citizens, modelled on the Pantheon in Rome which had been used in this way since the 16th century. The first panthéonisé was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau, although his remains were removed from the place a few years later. The building was twice restored to church usage in the course of the 19th century—although Soufflot's remains were transferred inside it in 1829—until the French Third Republic finally decreed its exclusive use as a mausoleum in 1881; the placement of Victor Hugo's remains in the crypt in 1885 was the first one in over fifty years.
The successive changes in the building's purpose resulted in modifications of the pediment's decoration, the capping of the dome by a cross or a flag, and some of the originally existing windows were blocked up with masonry in order to give the interior a darker and more funereal atmosphere, which compromised somewhat Soufflot's initial attempt at combining the lightness and brightness of the Gothic cathedral with classical principles. The architecture of the Panthéon is an early example of Neoclassicism, surmounted by a dome that owes some of its character to Bramante's Tempietto.
As of 2018 the remains of 78 people have been transferred to the Panthéon, including those of 73 men and 5 women. More than half of all the panthéonisations were made under Napoleon's rule during the First French Empire. In 1851, Léon Foucault conducted a demonstration of diurnal motion at the Panthéon by suspending a pendulum from the ceiling, a copy of which is still visible today.
Sens Cathedral is a Catholic cathedral in Sens in Burgundy, eastern France. The cathedral, dedicated to Saint Stephen, is the seat of the Archbishop of Sens.
Sens was the first Cathedral to be built in the Gothic architectural style . The choir was begun between 1135 and 1140. The sanctuary was consecrated in 1164, but work continued until 1176. It is a national monument of France. The structure was finally completed in the 16th century. The architecture of its choir influenced, through the architect William of Sens, that of the choir of Canterbury Cathedral.
Aix Cathedral in Aix-en-Provence in southern France is a Roman Catholic church and the seat of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence and Arles. The cathedral is built on the site of the 1st-century Roman forum of Aix. Built and re-built from the 12th until the 19th century, it includes Romanesque, Gothic and Neo-Gothic elements, as well as Roman columns and parts of the baptistery from a 6th-century Christian church. It is a national monument of France.
The present chapel of the Palace of Versailles is the fifth in the history of the palace. These chapels evolved with the expansion of the château and formed the focal point of the daily life of the court during the Ancien Régime .
